


scars

by mixians



Category: Super Junior, Super Junior-M
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 12:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mixians/pseuds/mixians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-war au. kyuhyun has nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	scars

They haunt him, follow him; the faces of the men Kyuhyun killed will never leave him alone.

He can’t shake the memories of them, the shocked expressions that crossed their faces and turned into desperate pleas for mercy in the instant before they fell; he can’t forget how coldly he’d proceeded, how easily he’d left them. It’s only now that he’s returned to the pile of rubble that was once his town that they’ve come back to tug at his conscience—maybe, Kyuhyun thinks, his sanity as well.

He’s a murderer, and everyone knows it—yet they praise him for it, for was it not in the name of their country? He was a soldier then; that’s what soldiers do. Kill people.

But what they don’t understand is that the act itself, the murder of innocent people—it leaves scars on one’s soul; the guilt gnaws at him, eating him from the inside out, and, Kyuhyun imagines, one day he will be but an empty shell, with nothing left for the angry, vengeful creature that is guilt to take from him, but he knows it will never be enough.

Kyuhyun hopes that maybe it’ll fade away, that he won’t have to feel it anymore, but at the same time he knows that hope is for fools, hope is for people who believe in love.

Love is something he’s long since given up on, so he is not a fool, he cannot hope for anything (but he does, and he knows that he is the greatest fool of them all).

 

\---

 

Kyuhyun is firing, again and again and again, endlessly; the air is filled with the sounds of gunshots—not just from Kyuhyun, but others too—and chaos rages all around him but he keeps his gaze fixed straight ahead, and that’s when he sees his target: a tall, lean man whose shoulder is bleeding from a gunshot wound, whose face is twisted in pain as he keeps shooting, but Kyuhyun can see the laugh lines around his eyes, the creases left by what he knows were smiles, and the weathered look to him that isn’t from the war at all, the look that says, _I’m tired._ Kyuhyun does not know that he will never quite forget this man’s face when he fires, hitting the man dead-on in the chest, but he knows that killing a man changes you—he’s seen it in others, dreaded the day it would happen to _him_ —and he’s not sure he’s ready for that change. Not yet. The man falls, jerking backwards from the impact of the bullet, and suddenly Kyuhyun feels all of the pain that he does, and it’s sharp and it chokes him, freezes him in place—

Kyuhyun screams as he jolts awake in his bed, sweating and panting like he’s still _there_ , in battle, and the adrenaline is coursing through his veins and even though he knows he’s safe, he’s filled with fear and it’s almost like he can still feel the pain from his dream in his limbs, and it _aches_.

He can’t sleep anymore after that, so he dresses in his only other set of clothes and goes outside. It’s still dark, but there are already people up and about, no doubt working on rebuilding the town. Kyuhyun can see the determination in their eyes to fix all of this, and he feels a little guilty at the thought, because—truth be told—he doesn’t care. Not when everything that mattered to him here is gone. He works with them anyways, for lack of things to do, but at the end of the day he still feels like he hasn’t done anything to help at all, and in his mind, it still doesn’t matter.

 

\---

 

It’s a month later that something actually _interesting_ happens.

Kyuhyun is constantly tired and unhappy nowadays—the nightmares have been getting more and more frequent as time goes on—yet he keeps pretending it’s all okay and that he’s just as optimistic as the rest of them, that he _does_ take an interest in restoring the town.

He listens to the daily gossip—it’s usually at least sort of interesting—and he learns odd things, like how Sungmin the farmer stole and _ate_ some guy named Jongwoon’s turtles because he was so hungry, or how various women have been having affairs with each others’ husbands. Today, all they can talk about is the tall, young newcomer, and while Kyuhyun’s curiosity is piqued, he scoffs a little at their exaggerated descriptions—really, they’re all but swooning—because who is actually _that_ good-looking?

When he sees the man himself, though, his mind changes completely, because they were right: he’s never seen anyone so beautiful. It’s almost shameful, the way he wants to gush about him the way all the women do, but the man looks so perfect, unlike everyone else here; very few people have any belongings left and hardly anyone even tries with their appearance anymore, but the new resident’s hair is perfect, and his clothes are crisp and clean and—at least, according to society’s standards before the war—what Kyuhyun would call fashionable.

The man is talking to a couple of ex-farmers and beaming, and Kyuhyun sort of wishes that the smiles are for him, and not _them_.

Eventually, the man gets around to speaking to Kyuhyun, and it’s almost like Kyuhyun’s heart is about to stop, but—no, that’s not possible, he can’t feel like that anymore; it can’t be what he thinks it is.

“I’m Zhou Mi,” says the man, and Kyuhyun is kind of startled by his voice because it’s so… _perfect_.

He manages to shove the feelings away as Zhou Mi introduces himself, and he sort of misses the last few sentences that come out of Zhou Mi’s mouth, but nevertheless gets out, “So you’re from China?”

“Yes,” Zhou Mi laughs, and Kyuhyun wants to hear him laugh for forever, but he continues, “I _did_ just tell you that I was sent here as a social worker. I’m here to help you rebuild your town, and more people and supplies should be coming soon. But I’m the only one who can speak Korean well, so I was the first one they sent.”

“Well, we don’t need your help,” says Kyuhyun, suddenly hostile, and even he’s kind of surprised at himself. There’s an odd feeling in him that’s sort of familiar and mixed with what he thinks might be bitterness and jealousy, and Zhou Mi looks shocked and a little stung; Kyuhyun almost wants to apologize, but then thinks, _There’s nothing to apologize for_ , and _It’s not like he’ll care_ and _He has no idea what any of us are going through_ , even though he knows that none of it is true, and he goes back home, alone.

Guilt that pains him almost even more than the guilt that plagues him in his dreams rises up in him, but he pushes it away and feels nothing.

 

\---

 

The nightmare he has that night is the worst he’s had yet.

It’s even more vivid than the others, although he didn’t expect that that was even _possible_ , and tonight it’s not just one victim: it’s all of them. He sees all of the ten men falling—although it seems like so many more, like an entire army—and he sees the desperation and pain and shock on their faces, and then even in his dream everything is pitch-black; men’s mournful, yet angry words fill his ears, and he can’t breathe.

“How could you do this to us?” says one, the one who has a wife and three children. This one is the man who Kyuhyun shot in the chest; he’s the one who bled out on the ground for hours until there was no life left in him; he’s the first one who Kyuhyun felt guilty enough about to want to save. (But he didn’t—couldn’t.)

“You’re a monster,” accuses another, and Kyuhyun remembers who he is just as clearly: a man whose only family was his dying father, who lived only to care for him until he was drafted into the army. Kyuhyun can hear the resentment in the man’s voice—his father died not two hours after he—and it chokes him as the words echo deafeningly in his mind.

Their voices all start to overlap, and Kyuhyun is drowning in the clamor, and it’s everywhere, inescapable; he’s trapped in the midst of them, and even though he screams and screams to _please just stop_ he is not heard—not even by himself.

When he finally wakes up, still screaming, his throat is raw and he gasps for air, breathing deeply and drinking the night’s complete _silence_ in thirstily, feeling relieved. That is, until a neighbor angrily yells, “Would you _stop_ screaming already, some of us need to sleep,” and disturbs the quiet, but after that there are no more sounds, because the crickets don’t chirp at night anymore, and Kyuhyun decides he likes it better that way.

It’s kind of awful, he thinks as he waits for the sun to rise, that he knows so much about each one of them, but after the third man’s death, his curiosity had been insatiable, and he’d sought out every piece of information he’d ever need to know. Maybe he’d thought it would give him some kind of closure, or make him feel better somehow, but he’s sure now that he always knew, somewhere inside him, that it would do nothing but hurt. And hurt it does.

Kyuhyun’s elderly professor once told him, a long time ago, that knowledge is power, but now it seems to him that it’s less power and more… _pain_.

 

\---

 

Zhou Mi seems to know about the nightmares, and to Kyuhyun this is both troublesome and comforting—not that he’ll ever admit that he even _cares_. Nevertheless, Kyuhyun thinks it doesn’t quite make sense that he knows, since (as much as they love to gossip) the others in town never even speak of it, perhaps because they don’t understand why he does it. But Kyuhyun doesn’t really know how else he’d find out, unless…

“I heard you screaming a couple of nights ago,” Zhou Mi says one morning, an eyebrow raised in question. “Something bothering you?”

“I—um. I don’t know what you mean,” Kyuhyun says, trying to be cold, but faltering.

Zhou Mi looks at him disbelievingly. “Really? Are you not aware that you screamed for an hour straight? And don’t try and tell me it wasn’t you,” he adds before Kyuhyun can even open his mouth, “I’d recognize your voice anywhere.”

Kyuhyun doesn’t bother asking why that is—people often remember his voice more clearly than any of his other features, anyway—and shakes his head, turning away. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s clearly not nothing, Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi says, placing a hand on his arm in what seems to be an attempt to be reassuring.

Roughly shaking it off, Kyuhyun walks away with another shake of his head. All he says as he leaves is “It’s nothing. Really.”

He’s never told a more blatant, bitter lie in his life.

 

\---

 

It’s _really_ hard not to like Zhou Mi.

As much as Kyuhyun wants to, he can’t find anything that’s actually wrong with him, and that kind of makes Kyuhyun like him even less (or more—he’s not quite sure). It’s kind of odd, too, because things seem to be much more interesting with Zhou Mi there, even though Kyuhyun tries not to associate with him much. (It’s almost as if he’s afraid of something, but there is nothing to fear but the dreams, he thinks.) When Zhou Mi actually _does_ speak to him, Kyuhyun is cold and quite rude, not that Zhou Mi seems to mind. Despite all this, Kyuhyun catches himself—on multiple occasions—noting what Zhou Mi does each day and his weekly routines, and even begins to go out of his way to cross paths with him, although the most they’ll exchange are glances and nods and the occasional “Good morning” from Zhou Mi, which Kyuhyun never returns or acknowledges. But every little thing makes his heart stutter a bit, ridiculously enough, and he knows what this could be, what this probably is, but he locks the thoughts away and decides that it’s easier to hate Zhou Mi instead. It isn’t, actually, but he keeps trying anyway.

 

\---

 

Even when it seems like the dreams can’t get any worse, they do. It’s not just dreaming anymore; the men haunt him in more than just his dreams now.

Occasionally (although “occasionally” is starting to become “usually”) he has lucid dreams, and even though he has more control over his _own_ actions, he still cannot control the men’s—when he screams for them to stop, they only get louder, and he screams uselessly, endlessly until the voices are literally deafening and he wakes up, sweaty and exhausted.

What’s even worse, though, is the sleep paralysis. They’re not his dreams, not at all, and the terror he feels is indescribable—he’ll open his eyes after a particularly bad dream, about to collapse tiredly onto his side, and find that he can’t move, and then the voices come again; it’s not like the dreams, because the dreams aren’t real, he _knows_ they aren’t, not really. When he’s frozen in place, barely able to even _breathe_ , he hears the voices louder than ever, and they’re all around him—everywhere. Sometimes there’ll even be shadows looming around him, looking as if they might suddenly spring out of the walls and attack him, exact their revenge on him, finally, and sometimes he wishes for that to really happen because at this point it would be almost some form of _mercy_.

Regardless, he tries to go about his daily affairs without showing it, plastering a smile on his face when greeted by others, stonily ignoring Zhou Mi when they brush shoulders (which makes Kyuhyun’s heart race, ever so slightly), but he’s pretty sure that Zhou Mi knows, too, that it’s more than nightmares now.

Zhou Mi has been making more of an effort to talk to Kyuhyun—which makes absolutely no sense, seeing as Kyuhyun as made it _absolutely_ clear that he doesn’t want Zhou Mi’s help—and Kyuhyun is occasionally tempted to give in and pour it all out, because sometimes he feels like he can’t take it anymore, but he never does, and he’s pretty sure he never will. (But there’s still that flicker of doubt, somewhere in there, and its presence scares him, just a little.)

So when Zhou Mi approaches him a couple of weeks later, it’s neither surprising nor unusual. Kyuhyun is helping Sungmin move bales of hay into his farm—which are _much_ heavier than they look—and looks up to see Zhou Mi heading his way, and he sort of freezes for a moment because the sun is glinting off of Zhou Mi’s red hair and it shines all around him, framing him like an angel, and in that moment he almost thinks that Zhou Mi _is_ an angel, but then he drops the bale of hay on his foot and the moment is over. Zhou Mi’s expression turns from a peaceful one to one of concern, and he rushes over and says worriedly, “Are you okay? What happened? Did you get distracted? You know, you should really keep your focus on one thing at a time!”

Kyuhyun just shakes his head and moves a little further away. “I’m fine. Really.”

“And how has everything _else_ been? Are you sure you don’t need anyone to talk to?”

“No,” Kyuhyun sighs, “like I said, I’m fine.”

Zhou Mi still looks uncertain, but says nothing and lifts the bale of hay from where it sits on the floor, starting to carry it into Sungmin’s pen. Reluctantly (actually, he’s only _slightly_ hesitant) he gets another bale and follows, and they work together, side by side, in silence. Kyuhyun makes sure not to look at him for too long, to get too close, to touch him if even for a moment—no, he won’t let himself. But he isn’t sure if it’s his mind playing tricks on him when he feels like Zhou Mi is getting closer and closer with every step they take (and he decides that it must be; his imagination is running wild).

His nightmare that night is not as bad as the others, almost like the ones near the beginning of it all, but he still wakes up screaming, and instead of being greeted only by his cold sheets and hard bed, he feels two arms wrap around him and a body press into him from behind, warm and comforting. He doesn’t know what this is, what it could be, but he relaxes into it and falls asleep like that, in a stranger’s embrace.

For the rest of the night, Kyuhyun does not dream.

 

\---

 

It’s odd, but Kyuhyun sort of likes that he doesn’t know who it is that keeps coming into his house at night. And somehow, the thought that someone has been getting into his house without his permission doesn’t bother him in the least. In a way, he enjoys the anonymity of the other man—because obviously the man knows who Kyuhyun is—and, perhaps, just having someone there with him. He understands, now, how it is to not be alone, and now that he knows it he wants to have that feeling that he gets with that person constantly, always, _forever_.

The nightmares are not so bad now, and it seems that they’re getting less and less horrifying each night, to Kyuhyun’s relief. It’s all because of the stranger, he knows, and he kind of wants him to know it. Somehow.

He doesn’t sleep one night, but instead waits until it’s late, in the dead of the night, when he hears his bedroom door open and close, and sits up on his bed to face the man who’s helped him for the past month. Kyuhyun smiles and opens his mouth to thank him, but then he blinks and the smile drops from his face, the words dying unspoken in his throat. In the dim moonlight, he can just barely make out the man’s face, and— _no,_ it can’t be.

Before his mind can even process it properly, he says, voice just barely above a whisper, “Zhou Mi?”

Zhou Mi freezes in place, standing halfway between the doorway and Kyuhyun’s bed, and now Kyuhyun is absolutely _sure_ it’s him.

“Why?” he asks, unthinkingly. “Why did you decide to do this?”

Zhou Mi doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns and leaves the room, the house, movements maybe a bit jerky but also graceful in their own way, and Kyuhyun listens as his footsteps echo, the sound growing fainter and fainter as time stretches on, until there is nothing left but silence.

He sits there, unmoving, as the sun rises, casting an orange glow upon the village, and people begin to stir as a bird somewhere sings quietly, sings a song with no melody. It has a soft kind of beauty, though, Kyuhyun thinks, almost sweeter than silence but not nearly as impossibly lovely as Zhou Mi is. Not _nearly_.

Regardless of those thoughts, when Kyuhyun sees him the next day, passing in the middle of a street, they both freeze, and for Kyuhyun it’s not because Zhou Mi looks particularly good (although he _does_ ). They stare at each other, both perfectly still in the middle of the empty road, and then Kyuhyun can almost _feel_ his eyes hardening as he looks away and brushes past.

That’s the other thing that’s odd, he thinks. That he acts as if he hates Zhou Mi when really, truly, he knows he wants nothing more than Zhou Mi’s love, even if he’s incapable of feeling that way himself. The doubt in him grows a little more, though, and vaguely he wonders if it’s that he really can’t love, or that he’s simply too afraid to.

 

\---

 

Zhou Mi doesn’t come in the night anymore, and although that does not come as a shock, he _is_ surprised when he realizes just how much he misses it. The feeling of having someone there, that is—or maybe just Zhou Mi’s presence in general. Kyuhyun isn’t sure.

But what he _is_ sure about is that he wants it back, whatever it is that they had, because maybe Kyuhyun hadn’t known whom Zhou Mi was when he came, and maybe he’d been cold and generally _awful_ to him, but it had worked.

They seldom see each other now; Zhou Mi has abandoned any past routines he’s followed, and Kyuhyun no longer knows how to find him. When they do cross paths, Zhou Mi doesn’t look at him, acts like he’s not there, and in a way it hurts. Just a little.

And it’s these pains that add to his nightmares now, which steadily grow worse and worse again, and now along with the men Zhou Mi is there, too, just sitting among them in silence and watching as Kyuhyun is reduced to a pathetic little being in his dreams; this, he thinks, is worse than having Zhou Mi scream meaningless insults at him like he’d expect; this hurts the most because he watches and watches and does nothing at all, like he doesn’t even care.

 _It’s true_ , Kyuhyun thinks, _he probably doesn’t_.

When he wakes from these nightmares, he doesn’t scream anymore. Now he cries instead, and he can’t explain it, can’t explain why it even matters to him, but the tears flow out of him easily—too easily—and he lets them; the _thought_ of it hurts in a way he’s never before understood, in his heart.

Is it a good thing that he can now feel the way he never expected himself to be able to? Maybe it’s supposed to be, Kyuhyun muses, but it’s quite far from it, anyhow. Maybe it’s just his heart finally trying to figure itself out. Maybe none of what he thinks he feels is actually _real_. Maybe it’s all just a silly little figment of his imagination.

 

\---

 

It seems that Jongwoon, nosy thing that he is, has taken an interest in Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun’s relationship recently—or maybe not so recently, if the amount of information that Jongwoon has is any indication. And the way Jongwoon knows the things that Kyuhyun used to think were _subtle_ makes him wonder if he’s really been that horribly obvious.

He doesn’t know why he’s still sitting in Jongwoon’s house, listening to Jongwoon coo at his turtle (apparently it’s the only one that survived Sungmin’s attack) and go on about how Kyuhyun needs to talk to Zhou Mi sometime because if they go on they’ll just make the entire town miserable. Kyuhyun doesn’t really know how that would work, but he tries to humor him anyway. He’s really only here in the first place because Jongwoon asked him to help move his furniture, but what Kyuhyun had forgotten when he’d agreed was that Jongwoon _has_ no furniture aside from his turtle tank.

“I mean, I’m _sure_ he has feelings for you—why else would he go into your house at night?” Jongwoon says, waving a chunk of something unidentifiable at his tiny turtle. “And how did you not find that creepy? Even if you’re in love with someone, you have to admit that it’s pretty odd.”

“I—I’m not _in love_ ,” Kyuhyun scoffs, feeling the heat rise to his face.

Jongwoon ignores him. “Anyway, if you want to get anywhere with him, you need to get over all of that awkwardness! Zhou Mi is obviously embarrassed. Maybe if you’d actually try to _talk_ to him your relationship could be less uncomfortable and more friendly! Or maybe something more, if you can do it right… But you have to get over that being-an-asshole thing first, or he’ll keep thinking that you hate him. Which is bad.”

“It’s not like I _try_ to be mean to him,” Kyuhyun protests, “it’s just that I don’t know how to act around him! I don’t want him to think I hate him, but there’s no way I’m in _love_ with him either—”

“And you obviously can’t admit your own feelings to yourself,” Jongwoon interrupts, shaking his head sadly as he leaves the turtle tank, the substance in his hand still uneaten. “You should see yourself when you’re around him. There’s a certain… _air_ about you two when you’re together; even I can feel it. And the way you look at him—it’s undeniable, really. So if you want my help—“

“Who said I wanted your help? You’re the one who asked me to come in the first place,” Kyuhyun snaps, feeling something akin to anxiety rising up in his chest. “I don’t need any help with anything.”

Looking at him calmly, Jongwoon says, “You clearly do. But before you go,” he adds quickly as Kyuhyun stands up to leave, “just listen to me for one moment. Don’t torture yourself trying to tell yourself you don’t love him. If you change your mind and decide to take my advice, I’d really like it if you thanked me somehow. Ddangkomaeng doesn’t really like the food I’ve been trying to give him, and I know Sungmin has some lettuce somewhere, so it would be great if you could try and get it for me.”

“Like you were even helpful,” Kyuhyun mutters under his breath, leaving as Jongwoon tries again to coax his turtle into eating his turtle food. Honestly, he must be the oddest person Kyuhyun’s ever met.

 

\---

 

Kyuhyun tries to take Jongwoon’s advice after all.

It’s more of a spontaneous decision than a thoughtful one, and he thinks that maybe he should’ve tried to plan this out a little better as he stands in the middle of the street, facing Zhou Mi, struggling to form coherent sentences.

“I—ah, I just wanted to say that I, um, think that it’s… I think it’s okay that you—you, um. That you came into my house at night. To help with the nightmares,” Kyuhyun says haltingly. “It—well, it helped. A lot. And I… sort of… miss it?”

He doesn’t really mean to say the last part, but it slips out before he can stop himself, and he shifts from one foot to the other uncomfortably when Zhou Mi says nothing, just stares at him with wide eyes for a few long moments.

“Oh,” Zhou Mi finally breathes. “I—So you don’t hate me?”

“I never hated you,” Kyuhyun tells him guiltily. “I was just being an idiot. In fact, I think I, um… I think I like you—but that guy named Jongwoon with the turtle says that I’m in love, which is kind of ridiculous but I don’t know if it’s true or not, and he tried to give me some stupid advice and it really isn’t working out for me right now—“

“You’re talking too much,” Zhou Mi says, smiling. “Maybe you should kiss me instead.”

So he does.

 

\---

 

It’s been a long time since Kyuhyun’s had a nightmare. It doesn’t mean that he’s forgotten the men, not at all, but they don’t weigh on his conscience like they used to. It’s a good feeling, being free.

Zhou Mi is almost always by his side nowadays, and it feels nice to have him there; it feels right. It sounds ridiculous, even to Kyuhyun, but it’s almost like they were _meant_ to be this way—together.

Jongwoon comes to visit occasionally—Kyuhyun isn’t sure when he actually became a friend, but that’s what he seems to be now—and each time as he leaves, he reminds Kyuhyun of how much he’d appreciate some lettuce. And he was, in a way, responsible for their relationship’s beginning, Kyuhyun thinks, so maybe he’ll go to ask Sungmin for his lettuce after all. It’s the least he can do, really.

**Author's Note:**

> wow, this was really cliched LOL  
> at least, the beginning was.
> 
> but i hope you enjoyed! :D thank you for reading~


End file.
